Chart of the Week: 42% of email senders have a good reputation score but is that enough to get emails into inboxes?

Email marketing can help convert leads into customers, re-engage existing customers and provide a high level of ROI – if you get your campaign right. Your emails aren’t just about engaging images or CTAs being in the right place, first and foremost, your campaign needs to be about getting emails into inboxes, which is where many people fail.
According to Return Path’s 2019 Sender Score Benchmark Report, 2018 saw more than 600 billion emails sent by spammers, which ultimately means that email providers get stricter with protocols designed to stop spammers. While these protocols are meant to protect people from potentially harmful emails, legitimate senders can be affected.
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The industry vibe is everyone gets too many emails, brands send too many emails and email marketers often see open rates in the 15% to 25% range

Why don’t more people unsubscribe from email? It’s a perplexing question.
The industry vibe is everyone gets too many emails, brands send too many emails and email marketers often see open rates in the 15% to 25% range.
Yet unsubscribe rates are typically around 0.25% - according to email industry benchmark reports.
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The new "Email Addiction" consumer research report just published by Zettasphere and Emailmonday provides an answer.
The report is based on results of a consumer survey and sought to get…

Three key insights from the UK Government’s latest report on employers’ demand for digital skills

Regular readers of Smart Insights know all too well the importance of having an up-to-date digital skillset. In today’s age of the internet and social media, it’s become more important than ever for employees to have a sound working knowledge of digital in an ever-growing digitized economy.
The UK government has recognized the need for a digitally literate workforce in our modern economy and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport commissioned a report, conducted by Burning Glass Technologies, to provide an overview of digital skills demand and to help inform the development of evidence-based digital skills policy.
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Andy Dorling, General Manager of the DMA’s Institute of Data & Marketing discusses some of the key skills that marketers and business leaders identified as being important to marketing teams and business success in the future.

The future of intelligent marketing will not just be dependent on organizations investing in the latest technological advancements or adhering to regulations like the GDPR. It will require skilled marketing teams to innovate, interpret data, engage with customers and communicate the latest trends to senior management in order to develop effective marketing strategies.
Perhaps even more importantly, it will require business leaders that acknowledge the importance of having a diverse, skilled workforce and who are willing to invest in career development for a range of technical and soft skills.

Data-related skills continue to grow in significance

It is hard to imagine any marketing role that will not be driven by a need to use data to develop the…

A review of some of the most interesting and important insights from this year’s report

Mary Meeker’s annual internet trends report has become one of the most eagerly anticipated moments of the year (well, for internet/ data nerds at least!). Previously of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and now Bond Capital, Mary Meeker has been presenting key trends, statistics and predictions on the internet since 1995.
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I personally find the report fascinating. It gives me the inspiration and ammunition to back new ideas, explore new concepts and take a step back and look at the world from a broader perspective. Meeker’s reports cover a wide range of macro (economy, immigration) and micro (e-commerce, digital advertising) topics that deliver a very…

Three lessons we can learn from TV advertising in the UK

One of the many advantages we have as marketers is the access to so much diverse, interesting insight. At Smart Insights, we regularly blog about the latest trends in email, display, search and social, all of which give us the opportunity to improve our knowledge and understanding of the marketing landscape.
The latest research from Thinkbox, the marketing body for the main UK commercial TV broadcasters (Channel 4, ITV, Sky Media, and Turner Media Innovations), provides some interesting data points on how media is being consumed in the UK. Although many of us may never use television advertising as part of our media mix, the research provides some useful insight into how people are consuming media in the UK and how this impacts other forms of marketing.
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Chart of the Week: 87% of business video views take place on desktop but what types of videos are people engaging with?

Video marketing is highly engaging and increasing in popularity, especially with the ability to share and view them via social media platforms. In fact, people are more likely to choose video over other forms of content, with 72% of people saying they’d rather use video to learn about a product or service if it is on a page alongside text.
As well as being engaging, video can also help influence decisions in both B2B and B2C industries. Research from Wyzowl reveals that 79% of people have been convinced to buy a piece of software or an app by watching a video.
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A record-breaking year for digital advertising as mobile and video dominate revenue in the US

The IAB’s internet advertising revenue report is a survey commissioned by the IAB and conducted independently by PricewaterhouseCoopers. It’s released in full twice a year and provides an overview of digital revenue performance and the influencing factors.
Although this report is from the US, many of the trends provide a strong indication of the direction digital advertising is taking in other western countries, including the UK. The 2018 report has revealed some interesting insights, most notably in relation to desktop vs. mobile, formats and market share by media.
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The report contains a lot of information so…

87% of marketers state that AI and machine learning are already vital to their organization’s success, yet this has the largest skills gap present in the data and marketing industry. Tim Bond, Head of Insight at the DMA discusses why these skills are essential to the future of intelligent marketing

Data and technology have already transformed the way businesses engage their customers in the 21st Century. The prospect of artificial/augmented intelligence (AI) and machine learning revolutionizes the speed with which we, as marketers, can take action on this insight to offer better, more relevant and engaging content to customers.
Much has been said about AI in recent years, but one thing that continues to be overlooked is the need for marketers who are driven to explore and develop their own skills sets, as well as organizations that embrace a continuous learning environment.
In the not-too-distant future, marketers will need to be equally proficient…

Discover what marketing channels were effective for online stores in Europe and how consumer behavior has changed in 2018

"There is nothing so stable as change," Bob Dylan once said and perfectly described all areas of life, including business. To stay relevant and successful, you should observe and analyze the current situation on the market. That is why I'm going to share with you some figures that demonstrate what marketing channels were most efficient for e-commerce in east and central Europe over the last year.

Average order value dropped, number of sessions jumped

For the CEE e-commerce Report, the Promodo digital marketing agency studied 150 e-commerce websites within 11 niches and found out that the number of user sessions has rocketed by 97% compared to 2017. This progress is almost three times less than in the previous year.
In turn, the number of transactions significantly falls behind the visits volume. Its growth…